* PAF5 to FH and quarter dates

[Salopian1]

Hi.

I’ve installed FH to evaluate it before purchase and exported my old data from PAF5.2.18.0 – using the PAF export facility clicking export to ‘other GEDCOM 5.5’ and it automatically showed char set UTF-8 which knowing nothing about, I accepted.

This as thrown up a couple of date problems and I see from previous examples on the forum that this isn’t uncommon.

The first problem I can live with and alter manually, this is: I have generally always input death details into PAF with an accompanying age at death. i.e., 12 Jun 1875 (54). FH seems to have taken this as some form of text. It doesn’t show in some of the data windows and reports, leaving death date blank or replacing it just with the burial date.


The problem that is just too extensive for me to contemplate is:

Quarters - in PAF I’ve previously input Mar Qtr 1916 for instance. Having already seen how FH took with such inputs, I used PAF search and replace to alter for instance all the Mar Qtr 1916 to Q1 1916. I thought this would solve that issue – it hasn’t. FH still treats this as text, now showing “Q1 1916”.

I’d dearly love to move on to modern software with all its great advantages but have I any reasonable fixes available to me? The death dates with age (about 250) as previously explained I can alter manually but the other problem involving quarters defeats me. I’ve over 1000 names so you can see the extent of the problem.

Suggestions welcome and I apologise if I’ve missed the obvious.

Thanks
Salopian1


ID:6492

[tatewise]

Any Date enclosed in quotes is what FH & GEDCOM call Date Phrase format, where the Date is not in a GEDCOM recognised Date format.

Lets deal with Quarter Dates first.
These are synthesised by FH from Range Between Dates.
So Q1 1922 uses the GEDCOM format BET JAN 1922 AND MAR 1922.
Or Q3 1900 uses the GEDCOM format BET JUL 1900 AND SEP 1900.

So your Mar Qtr 1916 probably needs to become BET JAN 1916 AND MAR 1916.

It sounds as if your Death Dates have both Date and Age details combined, whereas FH and the GEDCOM standard have separate DATE and AGE fields.

Presuming you have FH V5 then any FHUG member with the necessary skill should be able to write a Plugin to perform the conversion for you quite easily.
So be patient and a fix may be forthcoming.

And if the Quarter Date edit is too difficult then the Plugin could correct those dates as well.

[Salopian1]

Hi Mike

Thanks for the reply – a crumb of hope then! (And yes, FH5 version being evaluated – the 30 days is up on Fri. Afraid I got frightened off when I say the initial transfer reveal the problems and didn’t discover FHUG and its useful information until recently.)

As mentioned, I don’t mind taking some time over the death entries; I always knew there would be some issues.

The quarters is another thing altogether. I was so pleased with myself when I thought I’d simply solved this problem by using the search and replace on PAF to change all the Mar Qtr, Jun Qtr etc, to Q1, Q2 etc.

Having just crunched some basic figures for those entries where I’ve got the quarter & year recorded:

Q1 = 178 entries
Q2 = 180
Q3 = 188
Q4 = 163

An interesting exercise for the evenness of the spread and whilst some no doubt involve the same year, the prospect of a PAF search and replace, entering BET JAN 1916 AND MAR 1916 for the quarters and years involved, is a touch daunting and not one I’m sure I’ve the time to do?

A plugin? A new concept to me and if it’s easily done then I’d obviously be very grateful to someone with the knowledge. If not, well PAF as been a good servant over the years.

Thanks again for the info.

Regards
John
Salopian1

[tatewise]

I suspect you could start another 30 day trial after Friday.

See Tools > Plugins > Help for details of Plugins that were introduced with FH V5.

I could write the Plugin, but NOT in time for the Friday deadline. Especially as I would need to confirm a few more details about your DATE formats.

There is an Importing to Family Historian section in the Knowledge Base, but only for 'Generations'.
Perhaps there needs to be one for 'PAF'.

Let us know if you want to proceed any further.

[Jane]

Plugins won't run under the evaluation version of FH, but I can confirm a plugin can easily be done to convert your qtr dates. There is a find Date Phrases one in the Store and I have a version which can replace dates which FH classes as phrases with correctly formatted ones. It's just not in the store as so far I have seen a variety of different formats.

If you decide to go ahead with purchasing FH, if you shout I'll make a version of the date fixer for PAF and put it in the migration part of the knowledge base.

If you can confirm the two date problems are the Death dates which need splitting in to age and date and the qtr dates which need fixing I can do that fairly quickly, once I get a moment or two.

I have been working on a Generations file for someone which is why I did the page.

[Salopian1]

Hi Mike and Jane

Thanks both for your input – all very interesting, if not a bit scary.

I’ve seen the light and purchased the software.

Whilst it’s comforting to keep using something you’re familiar with, to a database lover like me, after even my basic look around the tools available in FH, it was just too tempting.

Jane – you’re correct with my problems. Where age was known, a death record could appear as:

12 Jan 1921 (54)

Dec Qtr 1930 (85)

Or where age is unknown, simply: Sept Qtr 1845

Births and marriages are without the (age) but still retain the problem of the quarter.

As explained in my previous post, using search and replace in PAF I altered Mar Qtr to Q1, Jun Qtr to Q2 etc. My death example of Dec Qtr 1930 (85) now shows as Q4 1930 (85)

I hope this makes sense? If you require further info please let me know.

Thanks
John
Salopian1

[Jane]

If you could email me a small sample file with a couple of examples in, I'll try and do a quick fix script for you. My email is janetaubman at gmail.com

edit: Based on what you have told us the following script should fix most of the problems

https://www.dropbox.com/s/22zpojmxbmvwd ... %29.fh_lua

Just download it and then double click it to install and run from the Tools>Plugins option, it will try and fix all the date phrases and show the results, if you still have any dates in ' ' then you can double click on the Fact cell to edit them manually. Where if finds ages and there is no age field for a fact it will move the age to the age field.

If you need to undo what is does just use Edit>Undo Plugin updates.

[Salopian1]

Hi Jane

Thanks very much for your assistance with my issues.

I’m afraid trying to run the plugin produced the following error message:

… DataCalico PieFamily HistorianPluginsDate Phrase Fixer (PAF).fh_lua:1:unexpected symbol near ‘<’. No changes have been made to data records.

As for your first comment about emailing you a small sample file with a couple of examples in – I’m afraid I don’t know how to do this?

John
(Thick)Salopian1

[Jane]

If you are happy to do so, just send the whole gedcom file and I'll run that through to see what the problem with the script is.

[Salopian1]

Hi Jane

A grateful note of thanks for sorting my issues out.

I hope to have a long and rewarding journey with FH. When your family tree gets to certain proportions, having software that can actually provide both quick and accurate insights into your database is invaluable.

Cheers.
John
Salopian1